On The Wall: Bowled Over

The Orange County Museum of Art's 2008 Biennial features twenty exhibits beyond the museum itself, scattered all the way from San Francisco down to Tijuana. Einar and Jamex de la Torre's "Pho’zole 2008," at South Coast Plaza's Orange Lounge, seems weirdly symbolic of the Biennial itself, offering up so many bowls of food that it would probably take the rest of your life to eat it all. The bowls are mounted on the wall, wrong way out, so the food looks like it's about to come dribbling out and land on your shoes with a wet splat. On their own and placed on a table the way a sensible person would do it, any one or two of these colorful meals might look tasty. But clustered together in one vertiginous sprawl like this, the effect is anything but appetizing. (Actually, it feels sort of like you've been swallowed by a hungry giant and you're trapped in his stomach with his last few dozen undigested meals.) As if all of this wasn't already unsettling enough, the de la Torres brothers have also included a video of people talking about food around the world; the video is embedded in the wall, and shines eerily through a pile of semi-transparent chow like the dream of a glutton sleeping off his latest binge. The food court's just a short walk away. Hungry?

Einar and Jamex de la Torre at Orange Lounge
South Coast Plaza, 3333 Bear St., # 303
Costa Mesa, (949) 759-1122 ext. 272.
Open through Mar. 15th